Today in Techrights

• [Meme] EPO Election (Auction)
• Links 01/07/2022: Condres OS 1.0 and Microsoft Losing More Share in Web Servers
• Published 10 Minutes Ago: IRCNow by Aaron Lin
• Links 30/06/2022: PostgreSQL 15 Beta 2
• Links 30/06/2022: Pine64 Has RISC-V-Based Raspberry Pi Rival, Pico W Introduced
• IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Canonical/Ubuntu Leftovers

• 12-Year-Old Developer Brings Ubuntu's Unity Desktop Back to Life

  Unity 7.6 is the first major version of the Unity desktop in six years, with the previous release in May 2016. Unity is a graphical shell for the GNOME desktop environment designed and maintained by Canonical for Ubuntu. It was beautiful and innovative, but another controversial Canonical’s decision threw it out in 2017. So, since its 17.10 “Artful Aardvark” release, Ubuntu has reverted to using GNOME as the default desktop environment. In addition, the last official update from Canonical for Unity was the minor 7.4.5 version dated back in March 2019. Now, the restart of the active maintenance of the Unity 7 Desktop Environment is a fact. And this whole thing is thanks to 12-year-old Rudra Saraswat, Linux Foundation Certified Developer and Ubuntu member from India. I had used Ubuntu 17.04 back when I was 8 [years old], and I really loved Unity7, so when Unity7 was discontinued by Canonical, I wasn’t happy and wanted to bring it back. I created this project to give Unity7 a new life.

• Star Developers are here!

  In the Snap Store, we have a fantastic community where members can discuss topics in the forum, develop snaps and help others. Currently, the Snap Store has verified accounts; verified companies have a green tick by their name to show that the snap has come from a trusted source. However, snaps from individual users were not getting the same recognition, even if a lot of care and attention has gone into developing them. To address this and give recognition to individual users in the snap community, we introduced Star Developers.

• New Active Directory Integration features in Ubuntu 22.04 (part 4) – Scripts execution [Ed: Canonical spreads Microsoft instead of replacing it]

  Linux Active Directory (AD) integration is historically one of the most requested functionalities by our corporate users, and with Ubuntu Desktop 22.04, we introduced ADsys, our new Active Directory client. This blog post is the last of a series where we will explore the new functionalities in more detail. (Part 1 – Introduction, Part 2 – Group Policy Objects, Part 3 – Privilege Management) In this article we will focus on how you can use Active Directory to schedule startup, shutdown, login or logout scripts on your managed desktops through ADsys. In this area, as well as for all the other new features delivered by ADsys, we tried to offer a user experience as close as possible to the native one available in Microsoft Windows, with the aim of enabling IT admins to reuse the same knowledge and tools they acquired over the years to manage Ubuntu desktops.

[ANNOUNCE] wayland 1.21.0

This is the official release for Wayland 1.21.

This new release adds a new wl_pointer high-resolution scroll event,
adds a few new convenience functions, and contains a collection of
bug fixes.

This is the first release to use GitLab releases instead of the usual
wayland.freedesktop.org website. The new links are available at the
end of this email, or in the GitLab UI.

Commit history since RC1 below.

Peter Hutterer (1):
      protocol: minor clarification for axis_discrete events

Simon Ser (2):
      util: set errno when hitting WL_MAP_MAX_OBJECTS
      build: bump to version 1.21.0 for the official release

git tag: 1.21.0

Open Hardware/Modding: Raspberry Pi Pico W and Arduino

• Raspberry Pi Pico W Projects to Inspire Your Inner Maker | Tom's Hardware

  The Raspberry Pi family has grown today and now includes a $6 wireless microcontrollers, the Raspberry Pi Pico W. We’ve already had the chance to check it out and have a full Raspberry Pi Pico W review available for anyone interested in the new board. In short, we’re head over heels for the new development and it looks like we’re not alone! Several makers have had the opportunity to check out the new boards and have even shared some new Pico W projects with the community that demonstrates its potential. Today we’re taking a look at a few of them to get you excited and hopefully springboard some new ideas with their inspirational creations.

• Where to Buy the Raspberry Pi Pico W | Tom's Hardware

  Officially launched today, the Raspberry Pi Pico W is the successor to the Raspberry Pi Pico, Raspberry Pi's first microcontroller board. Long time Raspberry Pi fans will know that a W at the end of of product name means Wi-Fi and the Pico W comes with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi all for just $6. In our review of the Raspberry Pi Pico W we praised how easy it was to get online. Taking a mere five lines of MicroPython to connect our project to the world. The Pico W retains GPIO compatibility with the older Pico, but at this time third-party addons are rushing to patch their software libraries to work with the Pico W.

• How to Connect Raspberry Pi Pico W to the Internet | Tom's Hardware

  The release of the Raspberry Pi Pico W brings with it an interesting opportunity. In the past if we wanted to connect a Raspberry Pi to the world, we would need one of the larger models. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and Raspberry Pi 4 were often pressed into data collection duties. The Raspberry Pi 4 is a bit of a power hog, the Zero 2 W is a bit better but still overkill for a simple information project. With the arrival of the Raspberry Pi Pico W we have a low power, microcontroller with a competent Wi-Fi chip, in the Pico form factor and only $6! So where do we start? How do we get our Raspberry Pi Pico W online, and where can we find interesting data to collect? Let us guide you through making the most of your $6 Raspberry Pi Pico W.

• New Raspberry PI Pico released: finally the WiFi came. Hidding Bluetooth capabilities?

  Today, 30th June 2022, great news was raised from the web: a new Raspberry PI microcontroller has been released. There’s something really important in this new product. While in Jan 2021 the Foundation entered into the microcontrollers world with the RPI Pico (see Raspberry PI Pico: Foundation entering the micro-controllers universe article for the launch news), the experts have noted since the first time that something was missing. The RPI Pico was a great board, really flexible and able to perform a great number of tasks. The compatibility both with C++ and MicroPython made it the perfect development board for those wishing to reuse their experience both from other microcontrollers (like Arduino) and from the Raspberry PI Computer boards, where Python is a milestone in programming with the GPIOs. The main feature missing was that the new Raspberry PI Pico wasn’t able to connect with a network as there wasn’t any networking capability like WiFi, Ethernet or even a basic Bluetooth.

• This large-format laser cutter was built from scratch for just $700 | Arduino Blog

  When stuck between a cheaper yet small laser cutter and splurging on a much larger one, Owen Schafer decided instead to just build one himself. The project started with Schafer sourcing a 40W CO2 laser, which differs from a diode laser in that it uses gas heated with 16,000 volts to produce a very powerful beam of light. This had the added side effect of needing a water-cooling system since the tube tends to generate ample amounts of heat. Once the laser and the necessary reflectors had been sourced, Schafer purchased aluminum extrusions and attached them with corner connectors. The head moves with the help of a gantry, wherein the X-axis slides along the Y-axis, and both are driven by NEMA17 stepper motors and a timing belt. For some added safety, he created a basic enclosure out of plywood just in case something went wrong internally.